It really, really IS who you know!

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, sociology, sociability, relationships

Do you want to live longer and better, be healthier and smarter? For about 3/4 of us, a truly holistic doctor would prescribe, "Join another group or two; spend more time with people you enjoy and love; get out more." Who would such a prescription not help? Those who already have strong, vibrant social networks. The rest of us would be well advised to develop them. Clue: a vibrant social group is not to be found in virtual space or on your computer or phone. Human faces work better than Skype, much better, infinitely better.

Humans really are social animals, though the extent of our sociability varies. For reasons yet to be ferreted out, all the genes that either strengthen or weaken social tendencies seem to be carried in all of us, but are differently expressed in every individual. How else to explain my family: my wife and I are both very introverted, yet our son is powerfully extroverted (or extraverted, as Carl Jung originally spelled the term); my father is an extrovert, my mother was more reserved, but very sociable, and my siblings and I seem to cover the spectrum (I am the most introverted).

It is becoming better known that married men, in particular, live 10-15 years longer than single or divorced men. The effect is not as strong for women, who tend to have better social lives than men even when they are introverts. Also, having a "partner" is not the same as having a married spouse, and confers no extra longevity benefit. It seems far too many married men have such poor social lives that their wives are their only close confidants (because "men don't talk about those things").

While reading The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter" by Susan Pinker, I suddenly remembered the play Our Town. Nearly all I can recall is when the narrator looks out and says, "…one day you look at the gray-haired woman at your side and realize the two of you have shared 50,000 meals…" Of many things Ms Pinker repeats throughout the book, sharing mealtimes, during which you actually converse, rather than grunting over the morning paper or whatever, and particularly starting in infancy, foretells how healthy and successful you are likely to be all your life.

50,000 meals. You know I always have to figure things out. Thornton Wilder must have been thinking mainly of farm families, in which the farmer returns home for mealtimes. Three meals a day works out to nearly 1,100 yearly, so 50,000 meals is a bit over 45 years. Even in 1938 when the play was written, an American couple who'd survived their childhoods, and were starting a life together by age 20 or 22, could expect 45-50 years together.

What of today, when most American couples see each other mainly at dinnertime? There's no way to accumulate 50,000 mealtimes together. For example, my wife and I have been married just 40 years. Nearly all that time, we shared 10-11 meals per week, depending on whether one of us slept through the other eating breakfast on a weekend morning. Throw in a couple weeks of vacation or staycation, with 21 meals together each of those weeks, and it comes to about 565 meals together yearly, or more than 22,600, but way less than Thornton Wilder's calculation. Now in retirement, we average about 18 weekly, and we're happier and more relaxed (not having bosses is also a big help!).

The book begins with stories of a couple of breast cancer survivors, and the social settings both enjoyed, that helped them cope with the sudden and extended disruption of their lives. They are contrasted with people who have little or no social support, and the studies that have shown they are much, much more likely to die shortly after diagnosis, even with aggressive treatment.

The second chapter probes an area of Sicily in which intense social support is the norm, and in which the number of 100-year-olds is 3-4 times what you'd expect. This is a well-attested matter, compared to earlier reports of extreme eldership in parts of Russia, where it was found that young men in Tsarist Russia had taken their dead fathers' identities to avoid military service, or in certain parts of Japan, where the dead had been reported as living for decades so their families could get government support payments (similar to one kind of Social Security fraud). In these villages, everyone truly knows everyone, and they care for one another with rare intensity.

Not everyone can handle the kind of ardent sociality the central Sicilians find normal. I wonder how introverts fare in those villages. But even introverts need at least a few close friends. The quintessential loner of our time, the Unabomber, who took great care to be as unknown as possible, was eventually discovered through his brother. Having "nearly no contact" did not equate to having none at all.

A major theme of the book is that our gadgets are no substitute for friends. Even though we might have tons of online "friends" through FaceBook or something similar, there isn't any health benefit to keeping up with all their Updates or Tweets. Nor are there any intellectual benefits. Rather, quite the opposite. Without going back over all the chapters about the effects of electronic gadgetry on children, I think it is safe to state this conclusion:

Both children and adults learn much, much better from the tutelage of a skilled teacher, than from any combination of laptops, smart phone apps, and other electronic substitutes, including MOOC's. (My conclusion; the author's is lengthier and more specific)

That is why families with the money to do so are putting their children into private schools that have demonstrably great teachers. There is much debate recently about the re-segregation of our schools. In a country where many more blacks are poor in comparison to whites, this is a visible matter. Stand outside a private school and count how many kids of each color exit at the end of the day. I have an idea: for every two children in a private school, offer free tuition to a minority child, and sufficient support by counselors to ensure a realistic chance at success. You'd also need to train the rest of the kids in kindness toward the free kids, or the school will internally segregate.

I suppose it started with the Boob Tube. TV has been around almost exactly as long as I have. Once considered a great "babysitter", the TV set has been exposed for what it is, a kind of "empty calories for the mind" machine. Too many of us are as inactive and "obese" mentally as physically (Think of obesity as a principle: mass without muscle. Apply that to your mind. Not a pretty picture).

It is too bad the word "friend" wasn't trademarked and made unavailable before FaceBook took it over. A "FB Friend" is not usually a friend. The default term ought to be "acquaintance". In the past few years the FB folks have made available some categories, such as "acquaintances", "close friends" (AKA your actual friends you're likely to meet face-to-face), and "relatives". Only an actual, physical friend can take you to the store when your battery's dead—and call AAA for you because so is your cell phone—, or give you a foot massage, meet you for a coffee or soda (I don't drink beer), and care for your cat when you're away for a couple of days. Ms Pinker makes a strong case that those who spend the most time online spend the least time with real people, and are thus the loneliest. And they'll often tell you that.

There is the Dunbar Number, named for Robin Dunbar of Oxford: 150. That is the number of strong relationships humans can effectively manage. Even then, not all will be equally strong. I think of a very social fellow in Bible history, king David. During his vagrant days, on the run from king Saul, he had about 400 men who followed him. Still, there were "the 30" and "the 3", and a second "3 who did not attain to the first 3". "The 3" seem to have each managed around 130 of the men, with the help of about 10 of "the 30", and possibly one each of the other "3" as a lieutenant. Let's compare with typical numbers of "FB Friends".

I have 146 "FB Friends". OF those, 23 are children of church friends (a "church kid" category), 12 are former colleagues from work (with a FB "smart tag" of the company name), 14 are "relatives", and 12 I count as "close friends" in that FB category. My closest friend other than my wife, a man I typically eat with at least weekly, does not use FB, though one of his sons is in the "church kid" group. Of the 146, 133 allow viewing their friends and my "Friends" page lists them, so it was easy to grab the statistics. Here is a bar chart of their "FB Friend" quantities:

By doubling the size of each category to get the next, I made this a Lognormal analysis. The result is skewed to the heavy end. Note that Dunbar's Number would be in the first of the three bars of about 30 members. The Median is 317, and the rather great number of folks with 1,000 or more "FB Friends" is startling. They must spend a good part of their day scanning their News Feed!

It would not be hard for me to double or triple my numbers. But I am selective whom I "friend". My sociable son, not so much. He has over 600.

I also looked at the face tags in Picasa, where I have about 25,000 photos tagged. Of 738 tags, not all are true names. Some are various kinds of "I don't know" designation, such as "unknown female second cousin" or "Bill in the Rock Club"; there are exactly 100 of these at present. I have 14 groups, such as "HS Friend of Son" (maybe 200 or so kids I'll leave him to sort out later if he chooses) or "Relatives of so-and-so" (several faces from old family reunion pix, say, in 1914). There are 51 various kinds of distant acquaintance, such as President Bush, photographed at long distance from a speech venue, or various people whose face and name I know but we've never met and will likely never meet, possibly because they're dead (Antoine Lavoisier is one of these). And there are 7  such as "baby Tom" or "young Tom" for a few children in the family that I wanted Picasa to be able to better recognize at various ages. That leaves 566 distinct persons that I either know well now, or have in the recent past. Not bad for the family introvert!

This is not just an entertaining book to read, it is a scholarly work, and the endnotes constitute an extra chapters' worth of fascinating reading material in addition to the many, many references. An example: From a note on page 314 about breastfeeding, the author points out that the claims for various health benefits of breastfeeding overlap in a significant way the benefits of skin-to-skin contact and face-to-face interaction between mother and baby. (I find it amazing that less than half of American women breastfeed at all, only half of those keep it up for 3 months, and very few last even 6 months. Much of the blame goes to companies with policies that disallow even unpaid leave for child care longer than 9 weeks. I am so glad my wife was able to nurse our son a full year.)

So, feeling a bit lonely? Nobody's going to come to you. Turn off the video game and find a compatible church or hobby club (My atheist brother belongs to a choir, and this season they are of course practicing the Hallelujah Chorus). Then, every chance you get to meet with one of your groups of pals, turn off the cell phone. It won't help you live longer, but they will.

Poly-what?

kw: relationships

I've been under the weather, meaning under the covers, for a couple of days. Just began to feel better. So I check my email backlog, and find that a friend is bragging about being "in a polyamorous relationship." I'd heard the term, but had to look it up. The older term for this is "group marriage", though the "marriage" part is rather flexible, more like "group of friends with benefits." I wonder how long it will take him to get tired of it. The "benefits" may be fun, but there is inevitably a ton of drama queen stuff that goes on, no matter how well-meaning everyone is. They don't last.

Back to line one. "Under the weather" indeed! I ran the phrase through the Google Ngrams analytical tool. Give it a try. I found that "under the weather" dates me. It was used in print mostly prior to 1960, with a peak before 1940. Usage since 1960 runs steady at about half the peak rate. Passing in the term "polyamorous", I find it was coined in 1966, vanished after 1975 (along with most sixties-era group "arrangements"), then burst back into steadily increasing use since 1991.

Myself, I've been monogamous since 1975.

Advice for the unadvisable

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, relationships, communication

In the past eighteen years a multitude of reviews of the book have been written, so I'll make no more than passing notes here. It is Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus: A Practical Guide to Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships by John Gray, Ph.D. I seldom read psychological self-help books. This one caused quite a flurry when it came out in 1992, but I didn't read it then. I happened across a copy in a thrift store, and decided for half a dollar I could give it a quick read.

It seems the only ones who don't already know that men and women use different "dictionaries" for the same words are the ardent feminists who are trying to make women into men with "other equipment". The usefulness of Dr. Gray's book is in providing a basic translation aid. As to differing behaviors and differing approaches to life's problems, the basic tool set is simple:

• When faced with a problem, women talk it out and men think it through.
• Taken by surprise or upset, a man retreats into silence, while a woman wants to talk through the feelings.
• Women feel cared for if they are listened to, but not if they are lectured. Men feel loved if they can help without being corrected.
• Both men and women go through cycles of being more or less affectionate. Get used to it.
  

In 35 years of marriage, I've learned to let my wife talk about her concerns without trying to "fix" them. If she wants advice, she asks for it. To at least some extent, my wife has learned that when I go silent, it doesn't mean I am ignoring her, but that I am thinking. I have learned to talk about feelings more than I did when I was young and insecure. This is the key to this book: a lot of people are insecure, and they get into all sorts of relationship problems for that reason alone. With maturity and growing security and sense of self, most of these problems take care of themselves.

My pet peeve is still this: being told to do something I've already begun to do. Women are experts at this. It is amazing that they can observe the least detail of someone's dress and accessories, but don't notice a man on the way to the door with the garbage bag, when they say, "Take out the trash." Young men, be prepared to get used to this, or it will result in an endless series of arguments about her being "controlling." She's not being controlling, she's just not thinking. It is a kind of reflex, and you are unlikely to change it.

The best advice is, go for a long courtship, and make sure your partner is perfect already (it helps to observe how a woman treats her father or brothers, and how a man treats his mother or sisters). Nearly nothing will change after marriage (or whatever you substitute for marriage). Any imperfections that show up later, resolve to grin and bear 'em. The best advice for couples is something I didn't find in the book. Learn to close your "eyes". Don't "see" the other too much. Overlook more and you'll fight less.

Oh, the gopher's connected to the cricket . . .

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, natural history, relationships

I learned a couple of new words:

• Inquiline – an animal that lives in the occupied dwelling of another animal.
• Phoresy – one species of animal riding on another species.

These are just two kinds of relationships presented in Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers & Other Unusual Relationships by Marty Crump. Inquilines aren't just the spiders, ants, and perhaps mice or roaches that infest our houses. The term refers also to camel crickets (and sixty other insect species) found in gopher burrows, the gobies that inhabit (and help guard) the burrows of certain shrimp, and the beetles—sometimes parasitic, sometimes commensal—that live in ant nests. And when we ride horses, it is just one sort of phoresy; the mites that flower-hop aboard the bills of hummingbirds were doing so long before people tamed horses.

And what is is about those orchids? They seem, as a class, to be bent on deceiving insects. Rather than offer bees or flies some nectar, though some kinds do, many orchids entice them with empty promises (smells or colors) only to trap them and slam pollen packets onto their backs, or they imitate sexy females and load amorous males with pollen, but leave them frustrated…and there are thousands of other modes of orchid chicanery.

These sample illustrations, from the book's dust jacket, drawn by the author's brother Alan Crump, touch on a few other relationships found in the book: A salamander using an antibiotic to keep her eggs free of fungus; a pair of penguins divorcing; a cicada-killer wasp and her prey; a monkey of one species known to use orange peel as a mosquito repellent; a crab of the sort that cleans sea lice from marine iguanas; and a cattle egret that follows the bovines to eat insects they flush up.

For simplicity's sake—you gotta organize the mess in some way!—the author, an accomplished naturalist, groups her essays into four sets:

• Relationships among members of the same animal species, from pair-bonding and grooming to cannibalism;
• Relationships between diverse species, such as cleaning, riding, and mutual defense…or mutual ingestion;
• Animals relating to plants, with gall-dwelling ant nests and the orchids that fake it;
• And the good, bad, and ugly things bacteria and fungi do for members of the animal world, from making bread dough rise to turning a beetle into a spore-dispersing corpse, to producing one of many kinds of "typhoid Mary"-type infection-spreaders.

The bottom-line message is that an ecology is defined by relationships. Think of Yellowstone (this is my example, not hers): more streamside vegetation grows there since wolves were returned to the ecosystem. Why? The partial answer is that the moose and elks are more vulnerable when eating near a stream, because there are fewer places to run. This is one of dozens of changes to the whole system that are thought to result from restoration of the natural top predator.

If there is a way two critters can interact, you can be sure that they have done so, and many of their most fascinating behaviors are found between the covers of this lovely book.

When to hold and when to cut and run

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, relationships, emotional abuse

In the classic film "Gaslight", a predatory husband tries to make his wife believe she's insane, so he can get control of her inheritance. Part of his scheme is a secret valve that he uses to dim or brighten the gaslights in the house. When she remarks upon it, he claims the lighting hasn't changed. She spirals toward a breakdown until a visitor tells her he also sees the changing light.

Dr. Naomi Wolf has seized upon the term "Gaslighting" to describe a type of emotional abuse in which a person with a powerful need to be right tries to convince a victim who initially disagrees. Her book The Gaslight Effect: how to spot and survive the hidden manipulation others use to control your life, written primarily for women, describes the process and effects, and techniques and attitudes needed to overcome this kind of abuse.

I was in my forties before I realized that some people can only "succeed" in their world-view if they can get you to feel guilty for your virtues. This is their hold by which they can control others. I developed two aphorisms for those whom I counseled: "Never apologize for being good" and "Those who live by their conscience are preyed upon by those who do not." I also pointed out that Jesus said, "Be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves." You gotta think like a snake, even if you prefer not to act like one.

I realized near the end of the book that those who become victims of Gaslighting also have a powerful need to be right, but fall prey to abuse because they also feel the need for their abuser to praise them. In other words, both predator and victim are of the same species; one simply has more power than the other, and thus can gradualy force the other to bend to his (less frequently, to her) version of reality. Ironically, the influence of "women's liberation" has led many women to fall victim, precisely because of their new self-image as good and capable adults, a view denied by the abuser.

At least one of the pair must make significant changes to break the cycle of abuse. Unfortunately, there is no incentive for the more powerful member to do so, so it is up to the victim.

Why does this happen so much? I've been victimized myself, and speaking for myself, there are two answers: the victim either loves or needs the abuser. Victimized children grow to be victimized adults with a built-in love of an emotionally controlling parent; a victimized wife (sometimes husband) is in love with the spouse—or remembers being in love, fondly; a victimized employee needs the abusing boss's approval to retain a job.

Strangely, while the greatest arena for this kind of abuse is schools, this is nowhere mentioned in the book. My wife and I feel fortunate that we had the wisdom and the power to remove our son from a couple of toxic classroom situations in which a teacher's main "technique" to "manage" (i.e. control) students was subtle belittling and discouragement of their spontaneity. We feel very chagrined that we were unable to deal with one of these situations, which led to our son's math abilities being stunted.

Dr. Wolf's book is not simply a descriptive text. It contains plenty of self-help information, quizzes, tips and resources. It is a call to action. She shows how, in four cases (probably composites, but based on her clients), some victims must terminate the relationship, some can limit contact (like seeing your mother less frequently, or only with friends present), and some victims are able to help both themselves and their abuser change in healthy ways. My mother once told me, in a rare moment of candor, that my marriage would be stablest if I moved a couple thousand miles away. She never forgave me for doing so, yet our relationship (mine with her) became much healthier as a result.

For me, I'd worked out the dynamics in the past, using the two aphorisms above. In addition to putting a continent between self and Mom, I've been able to completely cut the cord in one case, and in another, I changed from victim to abuser: I decided to stop walking on eggshells, and to make the other the eggshell-walker, just enough to keep him at arms' length. It is possible to convince a boss that he is in more jeopardy than you are. Turning into an old curmudgeon has its benefits!

Mr. Stanley, it's time to find Dr. Livingston again

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, relationships

The chapters have snappy titles, and in themselves, provide most of the content. A few of my favorites: "The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas," "Only bad things happen quickly," and "Not all who wander are lost."

The book is Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now by Gordon Livingston, M.D. Even in large print, it's a small book. A lot of folks really love Dr. Livingston. I found the book disappointing. Reminded me of Gertrude Stein's aphorism, "There is no there there."

Dr. Livingston, a psychiatrist and decorated Vietnam veteran, has lived through enough hell to earn his agnosticism. But it is the source of the emptiness of his discursions. I think if I lost my son, I'd also question God...but I reckon I'd recover. A life without faith is lonely indeed.

An aphorism of my own: All authors reveal themselves; good authors help us know others around us; the best authors reveal us to ourselves. I'd put this author on the border between the first and second categories.